


Mirror Mirror

by existentialflu (sotakeabitofcalpol)



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Angst, Can be read as slash, Disordered Eating, I suck at tagging, Implied abuse, Peter Jakes' shitty childhood, Scars, but as a metaphor, from jakes' perspective, i guess, implied self harm, its a pretty big yikes people, like a little bit of body horror, like a weird kinda character study of morse and jakes, sorry bout that, wasn't really my intention though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22086643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sotakeabitofcalpol/pseuds/existentialflu
Summary: Peter Jakes has never trusted mirrors. He barely even trusts shop windows. Completely unrelated, he doesn't trust the upstartOr; we hate most what we see in ourselves
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32





	Mirror Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Are the characters wildly ooc? Yes. Is very much of this actual canon? No. Do I care? Maybe.

You hate him at first. Bloody upstart, taking your place with such ease, gliding through in a way you never had the opportunity to. Coaster, pretty enough, in an angular way, pretentious, edges that would make an angel bleed and a mind that would pick apart that blood. Permanently watching, sticking his bloody nose in it, in every way that makes your nerves stand on edge.

So, in summary, you hate him.

* * *

That night you lend him your shirt, though, you see someone who knows pain. Knows it in that intimate depth that's proven only by the fact he carries on where a sane man would take a week, a day, a few hours at least. He takes long enough to let DeBryn stitch it, and he's already back.

No hospital. You can understand that.

You...well, you play it off. A quip about the shirt. Words hidden behind it. _No hospital. ~~People don't see scars unless they're looking, and they always are in a hospital. I understand~~._ He doesn't. He doesn't really seem to understand anything but the bad in people.

~~So why doesn't he understand this? This is the worst in you~~.

* * *

One day, you catch him in the light, not the dim light of the locker room, and you see the scars on the inside of arms, mostly faded, but some are newer. You know how wounds work, especially those ones, but you hurt enough at that point, didn't need anything else. There are scars, out of your reach, stripes on your back. You wish they matched the ones on your uniform, just the three. God knows how many years it had been since you'd only had three.

He sees that you see but doesn't say anything. You don't either. The coat makes sense. Even if he weren't skinny enough to shake his own bones with shivers, they cover up. Another reason you never lifted a blade. Besides, you've hidden your self-inflicted scars better. They're inside your mind, in the memories, in the pattern smoke etches into lungs when you spend more time breathing it in than out. You never did find the chance to exhale.

In fact, you aren't even sure you know how.

* * *

Your disguise is bravado, a little poumousse in the hair, a swagger, the emphasis on the rough accent. _Look at me, you scream, look how fine I am. I'm normal._ He saw you when that faded, when the torrent of memories washed everything away.

He never said anything. Couldn't, given where he ended up.

Regret stirs memories. Least you could do was to think of him. His facade, you've come to realise is in layers. Layers on layers. Peel back one, and he's the oxford student, peel back another, he's someone who's seen too much. If you peeled back far enough, he'd scatter to the wind, paper flying like snow. People to ashes, humans to dust.

There's a child hiding under yours. There's a child under his. You want to find it, but he'll find yours first.

* * *

You've never really gone in for food. Always dragged you back there. You got to eat when someone else didn't. The guilt ate away more than the hunger. Besides, now, the alcohol hits faster with an empty stomach.

He doesn't either. You both sit in that pub with the old man, watch him eat, drink up your pints and leave. You could pass it off as his mind, beating a frantic staccato into his head, click of a pen, the way he'd crashed after cases. God knows everyone else does. But you don't, because there's nothing in his fridge anyway.

~~Nothing in yours either~~.

And the guilt. It's a punishment, likely, same as yours. Curse from a shitty childhood, maybe, same as yours. Fear and guilt and loss, carving grooves between ribs. Definitely same as yours.

* * *

After he gets out, you're so afraid you don't say anything to him. That night. You abandoned him.

When you finally see him, you see the angel again. Wings, charred feathers, hang behind him. A shattered halo dances round his ears. Those angles, once cutting into something else, slice him open, words, unsaid, pouring out where blood should. Wrists you could snap with a touch.

~~Oh God, you could hurt him, you could shatter his bones worse than they already are, you...~~

Then his eyes meet yours, and there's nothing in them. Except you know those eyes, seen them since the first time leather had met skin. And now, you understand why you hated him.

He's not a man, he's a mirror.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work for this fandom, which is kinda weird given how completely obssessed I am with this show. In any case, howdy people! I'm Ro/Calpol. My tumblr is mainly existentialflu for morseverse, sometimes sotakeabitofcalpol.
> 
> This was angsty, which I apologise for. It's mostly born out of rewatching Prey and missing Jakes. It's also born out of the fact I read through ninety percent of the angst fics on here, so RIP me.


End file.
